China at Arms: Millennial Strategic Traditions and Their Diplomatic Implications

Abstract

At all times and in all countries the primary content of politics, or at least the content that has long drawn the most intensive attention from historians and observers of political affairs, is the struggle and conflict for power, with conflicts of interests, wills and passions as its essential driving forces. For this reason, politics often entails violent conflict or its potentiality and because of this critical mechanism embedded in the internal and external affairs of human polities, strategy directly aimed at preparing or conducting organized large-scale violent conflict — that is strategy in its original or narrow sense — has often accompanied national politics. At the same time, the politically organized human community has always been both civil and military in combination, with civil affairs having diplomacy as one of the important components in the conduct of foreign relations. Over time, both the strategy and diplomacy of a country could develop their respective traditions. At a much profounder level, the relationship between the strategic and diplomatic traditions of any country is such that they reflect in a mutually complementary way the characteristics and political culture of a particular people or national state, and together constitute the common foundation of its international relations. In regard to these traditions, the most fundamental questions we should ask are: Whose traditions are these?

Keywords

Political Culture Ming Dynasty Soft Power Grand Strategy Military Strategy

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Paul Kennedy (2005) ‘The Grand Strategy of the United States at the Present and in the Future’, in Paul Kennedy (ed.), Grand Strategies in War and Peace, translated by Shi Yinhong and Li Qingsi (Beijing: World Affairs Press), pp. 169, 170.Google Scholar

‘(In the future), after our economic power becomes stronger, we can take out more money to upgrade our military armament’, and ‘after the national strength is much stronger, we can also develop some atomic bombs, missiles and upgrade some military armament, including air, naval and land forces. That will become easier at that time.’ Deng Xiaoping (1993) Deng Xiaoping Wenxuan [Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping] (Beijing: People’s Press), Vol. 3, pp. 99, 129.Google Scholar